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Sauron also didn't suddenly show up and start owning everyone. There was actually still a ten-year siege of the Dark Tower after the battle in front of Mordor's gates.

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Yes, ten years. I believe it was a reference or a homage to Illiad maybe. Its not that important for a movie to show it but could have been easily just mentioned by Elrond.

And indeed Sauron has not came out, because he was scared. He fought in the end out of shere desperation, because they broke in and stormed into the Barad Dur and attacked him. he fought because otherwise he would have been just killed.

meanwhileInPoland said:

i usually dont give a fuck about changes in movie adaptation but ffs i totally forgot about gil galad and elendil. that shit could be epic. not like hollywood epic cgi fest but grim, bloody duel between three mean motherfuckers, where all of them die

instead we got middlearth darth vader with force push in his mace
hate you mr. jackson

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Truly and magnificently epic, and completely tragic, yes.
And easily done, as a memory-story told by Elrond who have watched it, as several not that long scene,. or one bit longer but not long at all cause the duel didnt last for hours.

Not only Jackson created a Vader with force push mace but he killed Elendil with first shot. Elendil never even touched him for fuck sake, while really he gave a mortar blow. Or one of them.
The fight isnt described in any big detail (for those who dont know) but what is said is very clear.

And Sauron was described as human looking only with black skin that burned like fire and thats how he killed them both. Not like some fucking giant vader with a mace.

Nobody, nobody has the right to change that part. Either you do it right or not at all.
Fucking asshole. (i mean jackson of course)

anus_pounder said:

I would actually ask you to compile an entire list of changes alongside your own comments about them, but I doubt you'd want to do that. Too bad, that was actually pretty informative and interesting, what you wrote.

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It would be too long, massive, if i really wrote everything and i would have to watch the movies again - which i cannot do.

The only thing that jackson created that isnt described much in books is the fall of Gandalf with Balrog into the depths of Moria at the beginning of two Towers. Their fight as they were falling and the end of the battle.

That is Tolkien.

The rest of his inventions are abominations.
fuck... i just remembered the whole deal with Elrond fucking lying to Arwen trying to trick her into leaving middleearth and him hating Aragorn... ohh... fuck... like mexican soap opera plot...
aaaghhh!

Erebus said:

The first prologue they did for the movies mentioned Gil-Galad, Elendil, etc. But it was way too fucking long and I understand why they ended up using a shorter one.

The worst thing about the LotR movies is the fighting choreography. When they aren't doing retarded stunts like skateboarding around on their shields, they're acting out the lamest swordfighting ever. Aragon just swings his sword around in slow motion, effortlessly decapitating orcs and severing limbs, while Legolas does this stupid 12 year old fan fic shit like stabbing an orc in the face with an arrow then pulling the arrow out and shooting another orc with the same arrow (in the space of 5 seconds of course). All the while the CG orcs just hop around as if they're limping and never ever take a swing at one of the non-CG combatants unless it's a slow-mo-death-of-a-hero shot. And what of Gimli? He is confined to the sidelines throughout the entire trilogy. The only time he does ANY sort of fighting is either when he's in the background or in a "humorous" scene such as when he's hacking orcs in their groins and counting how many kills he apparantly gets from doing that, or is trapped beneath a dead warg when an orc climbs on top of the warg and looks over with his dagger held menacingly and Gimli snaps the orcs neck, adding to the pile of corpses on top of him. It's just completely unimaginative and there's no suspense or exitement at all. I can't believe I thought it was cool when I was a kid...

As for the deviation from the books - that I can generally accept. I did not read the books so I do not care about how faithful it is and the written work couldn't be translated to film without lots of tampering anyways, so when it contributes to a smooth flow of the movies I'm fine with it (the "Frodo setting off immediately after Bilbo's birthday" thing is one such example - if they fast forwarded 20 years later before he set off, the movie would've lost it's momentum). The only times I didn't like deviation, is when they crossed over into seriously fucktarded hollywood land. Such as having ghosts at the battle of Minas Tirith. The ghosts challenged the logic of the story; if they could auto-win against any opponent why did Aragorn only contract them for one freaking battle? They are supposedly desperate to have their curse ended after all, so it's not like saying "hey I may have a couple of battles coming up, if you help me in all of them I will release you" would really have been such a hard bargain - heck he didn't even agree upon how the ghosts would help him, he just said some vague line about "I call upon you in my hour of need" - or something. The ghosts also made everything in the battle prior to their involvment pointless, since they auto-kill everything and Minas Tirith would have held out until their arrival regardless of the Rohan or Easterling reinforcments. And yeah there's more dumb shit concerning the ghosts/movie but this is already long and convoluted so whatevs I'll leave off here.

I agree. Unfortunately good fight choreography is rare, and becomes exceedingly difficult to film with several untrained actors plus stuff happening in background that you have to synchronize between takes.

Ideally, Gimli would be about consistently compensating for his height. He's short and stocky, and would be throwing himself under everyone, flinging them over, and then stabbing them in the throat. Or maybe he would end up stabbing them where he can reach first, and then flinging them over into another attacker who has yet not been stabbed.

Or maybe he would carry a very long halberd/spear/something to compensate for his height. Or some more exotic Chinese weapons with even larger radius, swinging around chains and shit.

The main goal of his style would be to make everyone else at least as short as he is, and then finish them.

The sword fights... it would be nice if they chose an origin for an actual fighting style. Western medieval, Japanese, SOMETHING that has a "movement style" to it.

Maybe the more elegant elves would be more Japanese in swords and archery and the more bulky no-nonsense humans would be more Western-medieval.

Humans with larger swords, less refined but nonetheless battle-tested movement... movement that works best for larger swords. Bulky, loud. They can afford to block and shit.

None of the flashy "I know a camera is looking at me" movement, just what needs to be done most efficiently at the moment.

The fact that Orcs swing around like drunks in a bar is okay IMO. It was hard enough for Jackson's team to write software to generate spontaneous fighting for hundreds of Orcs. Plus they're dumb, and win by sheer numbers and brute strength, so it fits.

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Well to be honest, I never noticed the bad fighting choreography because the camera-work sucked. I just remember everything looking "frantic" when shit hit the fan. Nonetheless, I still liked the Rohirrim charge on Pelennor Field (probably because they panned wide...).

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Im really annoyed by this common fallacy that goes: "changes from a book to a movie are necessary therefore any critique is actually just unrealistic desire to have the book literally and completely put into the movie - and all changes are just great because they are changes."

They are not. They can be bad or good.
And if they are bad then they deserve a critique.

There's no such thing as good choreography for a fight. The more choreographed it is the more shit it is, save the choreography for dancing. Just compare the fights between Vader and Luke to any retarded fight from the prequels, no comparison.

Such as having ghosts at the battle of Minas Tirith. The ghosts challenged the logic of the story; if they could auto-win against any opponent why did Aragorn only contract them for one freaking battle? They are supposedly desperate to have their curse ended after all, so it's not like saying "hey I may have a couple of battles coming up, if you help me in all of them I will release you" would really have been such a hard bargain - heck he didn't even agree upon how the ghosts would help him, he just said some vague line about "I call upon you in my hour of need" - or something. The ghosts also made everything in the battle prior to their involvment pointless, since they auto-kill everything and Minas Tirith would have held out until their arrival regardless of the Rohan or Easterling reinforcments. And yeah there's more dumb shit concerning the ghosts/movie but this is already long and convoluted so whatevs I'll leave off here.

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Yeah, that was incredibly stupid. I loved that the ghosts move at like mach 3 and swarm the city

Yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I was some human soldier and lost my arm or some shit only to find a bunch of ectoplasm shit wash away all the enemies. WTF?

That whole battle felt like a little kid playing war:

"BUT THEN THE EVIL FORCES USED CATAPULTS! THE GOOD GUYS R LOSING!"

"BUT THEN GANDALF TELLS THE GOOD GUYS TO USE CATAPULTS! THEY GONNA WIN!"

"BUT THEN THE EVIL GUYZ GOT A BIG RAM!"

"BUT THEN THE GOOD GUY HORSEYS COME!"

"OH NO ARABS!"

"YAY THE LADY KILLED THE GENERAL DUDE"

"FUCKING GHOSTS!!!"

"I agree that two times two makes four is an excellent thing; but if we are dispensing praise, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most charming little thing as well."

I hated how they turned Aragon in a super hero, they probably decided that they need to have one central character but they could made him more "human".

He has all the answers and no doubts, in one scene Gandalf the White who is a immortal messenger of Gods worries about Frodo and Sam, it is Aragon who persuades him the they are fine. In the books he has doubts like any other character and is often insecure about the future.

As I said, Theoden is one of my favorite characters in the book. He is a old man who knows his time is over, he feels responsible for being manipulated and the death of his son and wants to do something glorious before his death, something to be remembered by.

After regaining his senses he wants to die in blaze of glory but Gandalf persuades him its suicide to fight without help of Eomer and he should go to Helms Deep. In the movies it is Theoden that cowardly wants to go to the HD and both Gandalf and Aragon roll their eyes on how incompetent and cowardly he is.

At the end of battle for HD Theoden is trapped with his men in the castle, he decided to ride out in the battle because as a man of Rohan he should die on a horse and not behind stone walls, which leads to one of best moments of the books as few ride gloriously against many. In the movie, Theoden shivers from fear and cries how everything is lost, but no worry Aragon is there to tell him to ride one more time and reclaim his honor.

After victory Theoden starts gathering his troops and marches to help Gondor. In the movies he refuses to send help because "what did they ever do for Rohan" and of course Aragon rolls his eyes at stupid old man but finally he is convinced to go to war.

Aragon also steal his speech, the speech Aragon speaks at the final battle in actually the speach Theoden speaks before the charge at Minas Tirith and the battle cry "Death" is said by Eomer when he witnesses death of Theoden.

Also did anyone find it weird how when the Fellowship came to Moria Gimli was surprised that everyone is dead. Everyone speaks of Moria as a evil, cursed place but for some reason Gimli thinks otherwise, like when they get there there will be a dwarfen feast and this guys are only afraid eating traditional dwarf meat pies.

There's no such thing as good choreography for a fight. The more choreographed it is the more shit it is, save the choreography for dancing. Just compare the fights between Vader and Luke to any retarded fight from the prequels, no comparison.

Looks good. I enjoyed the films (or at least, the first one - the second and third fucked things up too much and were way overlong and boring), and for the most part I think Peter Jackson is a good director. So long as he doesn't try turning The Hobbit into some "epic" shit and include too many scenes with Bilbo skating down elephant snouts, I'll probably be satisfied. Generally I'm one of those people who's willing to accept sacrifices to a story for the sake of converting it to a different medium; unless those changes really are to the detriment of the finished work, I don't mind much.

markec said:

Also did anyone find it weird how when the Fellowship came to Moria Gimli was surprised that everyone is dead. Everyone speaks of Moria as a evil, cursed place but for some reason Gimli thinks otherwise, like when they get there there will be a dwarfen feast and this guys are only afraid eating traditional dwarf meat pies.

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Maybe he just didn't know, or was holding out hope that some were still alive? Maybe the shock of seeing all his dead people first-hand? It did always strike me as strange though.

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Also did anyone find it weird how when the Fellowship came to Moria Gimli was surprised that everyone is dead. Everyone speaks of Moria as a evil, cursed place but for some reason Gimli thinks otherwise, like when they get there there will be a dwarfen feast and this guys are only afraid eating traditional dwarf meat pies.

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Gimli was basically totally destroyed, from the character in the book - a young and not trusting, even a bit suspicious dwarf - to an old eyecrossed lulzy DnD dwarf whos throwing around jokes and gags and spills drinks and food over his beard when he drinks or eats.

The specially ludicrous trick is that DnD and similar settings just stole from Tolkien and devalued all the depth and originality he provided for non human races and jackson turned Gimli into a crap of that kind.

There was one crazy expedition, after events in Hobbit if i recall correctly, in recent years, but messages stopped coming and all dwarves knew those who went all died.
Not really surprising how seeing that Gimli was turned into a caricature jackson thought that another change was also cool for some reason.

And Helms Deep rubish... i really loved when the freaking elves came there. Not only did they came which is completely ludicrous but there was one company who just stood straight while arrows killed them and suddenly it was Galdir who led them and he was a fucking elven Prince.
A prince.
A prince of what?
And then he dies two seconds later.

He was an ordinary guard in the book, doing his duty on borders of Lothlorien when fellowship came in, not a fucking Prince. There was no elven fucking princes there. The Galadriel was a Quenn of Lothlorien and she had her husband and Galdir was not their child!
Here he is a prince so his immediate death would i guess have a bigger effect. err... dont ask me on who.

And it was so funny when it turned out that Saruman is actually inside Theoden. Like some ghost.
Hilarious.

There's no such thing as good choreography for a fight. The more choreographed it is the more shit it is, save the choreography for dancing. Just compare the fights between Vader and Luke to any retarded fight from the prequels, no comparison.

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FYI, the fights between Vader and Luke weren't something that spontaneously erupted on the set. They were choreographed.

They were just choreographed more sensibly.

Subscribe to my Violence Channel on Youtube. High-quality footage of mall cops failing at their job, Nazis being punched, and Judo guys throwing people in supermarkets!

There's no such thing as good choreography for a fight. The more choreographed it is the more shit it is, save the choreography for dancing. Just compare the fights between Vader and Luke to any retarded fight from the prequels, no comparison.

Click to expand...

FYI, the fights between Vader and Luke weren't something that spontaneously erupted on the set. They were choreographed.

Meh. Looks like it was cut together from recycled leftover materials from LotR. The movies were shit, so I won't be able to stomach another one in the same style, from the same director.

Too bad, I really liked reading The Hobbit when I was a kid, some talented director (.i.e. not Peter Jackson) could probably turn it into a pretty decent flick.

Sneering will only get you so far, fellows. Sooner or later somebody will ask you to elaborate and discover you basically adhere to any idea that is presented on television. That's not a rationalist. It's insane.

I mean a bunch of super gay martial arts moves have no place in any movie unless it's dedicated to martial arts and has a strong dose of camp. To have a remotely serious movie with muppets whizzing around completely obliterates such a movie. Since the prequels try very hard to be serious in parts, in spite of stunning moments like r2d2 terminating an army of robots and incredibly bad light saber fight with darth maul, it means the movies are complete crap.

Compare Jango Fett in the prequels to Han trying to blast Vader and having his blaster taken away with humiliating ease. If Lucas redid that scene now Han would have done 8 flying kicks and killed 20 storm troopers before vader brought him down. Almost every move in every fight scene is completely out of place for the whole series, and even for what's happening at that moment, making it a complete joke.